UN alarmed over Iran nuclear program

The UN's nuclear watchdog has demanded greater access to Iran's nuclear program amid growing anxiety in the West that Tehran is much closer to building a nuclear bomb than previously feared.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Moham ElBaradei, said Iran had nearly completed the uranium enrichment plant at the centre of US claims that Tehran wanted to develop nuclear weapons, and was working on a bigger plant.

Dr ElBaradei called on Iran to agree to more intrusive monitoring at its nuclear sites to help dispel fears that Iran intended to produce weapons-grade uranium.

With Iraq and North Korea, Iran is one of US President George Bush's "axis of evil" rogue states with ambitions to build nuclear weapons.

The agency discovered only six months ago that Iran was building centrifuge plants to process nuclear fuel at a secret site 320 kilometres south of Tehran. When operational in a couple of years, the centrifuges could generate enough weapons-grade uranium for several nuclear warheads.");document.write("

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The discovery of the centrifuge project at Natanz, in western Iran, alarmed US official. The officials had long argued that Tehran was trying to build a bomb, but had focused their concerns on a power station that Russia is building at Bushehr in Iran's far south.

The Natanz revelations showed that "Iran is much further along, with a far more robust nuclear weapons development program than anyone said it had", US Secretary of State Colin Powell said last week.

Although Iran depends on Russian supplies of nuclear fuel for the 1000-megawatt reactor being built at Bushehr, Tehran also recently said it would mine its own uranium and process it for nuclear fuel, raising the possibility of generating plutonium for a bomb.

The Russian nuclear fuel is expected to start arriving within weeks for the power station. Russia has resisted intense US pressure to halt its nuclear co-operation with Iran.